Recently, I shared some notes about building expertise in your career (aka climbing the Y-axis). That post was largely written to set the stage for this one. I wanted to dive deeper into the Y-axis in my career or what I’m calling my “personal moonshot” to borrow a phrase from Tyler Cowen.
In short, I’d like to dedicate the rest of my career to making “healthy” more affordable and accessible for everyone. Specifically, I want to improve how people pay for and access care plus how we can shift towards preventative versus reactive care (Medicine 3.0 in Attia speak).
Growing up, I had an unusual fascination with health and fitness. I often share the example of blending up raw eggs and bananas into a breakfast smoothie in 7th grade and bringing protein bars to snack time. This heavily influenced my decision to major in Exercise Science and work in the school rec center as a personal trainer throughout college and grad school. What do you do with a degree in Exercise Science? I wasn’t sure, but it revolved around health and working out.
After college, I continued working as a personal trainer, this time in a commercial gym where sessions sold for $99+/hour. To my surprise, the actual training part (helping people improve their health) took the back burner; the focus was selling more of your services to prospective clients. Often, the most “successful” trainers were the best sales people, not the ones creating the best results.
I also came to another frustrating realization. The people that most needed my help often couldn’t afford me.
In one situation, I remember doing a consult with two friends. One friend could afford to sign up; they lost 20+ lbs, improved their confidence, and got back on the dating scene. The other didn’t achieve those same results. This bugged me to my core. I knew I could help both individuals. This is an instance where a $1,000 investment could really change the trajectory of someone’s health. If this individual went to the hospital for a reactive procedure, insurance would be happy to pick up the bill, but there wasn’t a financial tool in place for assisting with proactive help.
Through working one-on-one with clients, I also came to better understand the true cost of health. Sure, my sessions were expensive, but that was just the start. Healthier food, proactive healthcare, and ancillary services like massage or acupuncture ballooned monthly expenses. And, these were clients fortunate enough to pay $100+ for a single training session. Just imagine everyone else.
Eventually, I left the commercial gym setting and started on a 10+ year journey in tech. I gained experience across consumer and enterprise SaaS at WordPress.com and Zapier. While I enjoyed these experiences, in the back of my mind, I was wondering how to pivot back towards health and apply what I had learned.
I subsequently joined Ness and, more recently, Paytient—both focused on what I hope will be the central theme of my career moving forward, making healthcare more accessible for everyone. Why?
First, as I’ve described above, I’ve witnessed firsthand the health disparity, specifically in the US. When you start to unpack the food system and why corn products are so cheap (plus what they do to our bodies), it’s hard not to become frustrated.
Second, compared to other sectors, healthcare isn’t necessarily “sexy.” It’s full of regulation and acronyms, not necessarily inviting for newcomers. It’s much easier to make a buck in social media. We need more people diving in to fix our broken system that leaves many people out of the loop.
As I wrote in climbing the Y-axis, I admire individuals that are mission-oriented and focused on solving one problem over a long time horizon. Adapting a quote shared by many but most recently from Marty Cagan, “Fall in love with the problem, not with the solution.” I’m certainly in love with the problem of giving everyone access to healthcare, and I’m looking forward to the decades ahead.